


Masquerade

by inawasteland



Series: 25 Days of Rooster Teeth [5]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: F/M, Fake AH Crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:55:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2724629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inawasteland/pseuds/inawasteland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It really shouldn't be surprising that Ryan's loyalties to the rest of the crew aren't all that strong.  After all, he wears a mask and hasn't even told them his real name.  So when a stranger comes along and is hitting the jewelry store the same night as they planned on, his loyalties are tested.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masquerade

There were five other people in his crew. Together, the six of them ran some of the toughest jobs the city of Los Santos had ever seen. There was the bank job back in May, they hit a convenience store in June, and last month was the armored car that net them several thousand a piece. It was safe to say that Ryan was very comfortable with the people that he surrounded himself.

By some miracle, his team survived without any lineup changes for this long. They had some close calls, but with Ryan’s ability to think quickly and his love for carnage and sticky bombs, they managed to come out of each job relatively unscathed.

Things were bound to change sooner or later.

One night, the gang was supposed to be hitting a jewelry store. The only problem was, they weren’t the first to arrive at the scene. There was someone already there, a girl wearing a skintight catsuit and currently disabling an alarm.

Well, that certainly fucked things up, just a _little_.

The shock of seeing someone else do their planned out job sent a wave of confusion through Ryan’s team members, and he could tell they had every intent of offing the girl. No witnesses, right? Normally Ryan would completely agree with this mentality, but nobody had seen his face (why else did he wear a mask?) so he tried to calm his crew down just enough to get in and get out.

“And this is why you should all buy fucking masks,” Ryan muttered to himself as he shooed Michael and Gavin back into their getaway vehicle. “Look, I’m going to go talk to her and see if I can work something out. There’s thousands of dollars worth of stock in the display case and who knows how much in their vaults. She might be willing to split if we give her cover out of the building,” he explained to Geoff, the head of the whole operation.

“Why do you want to protect her so bad anyway?” Ray asked, slipping a magazine into his pistol. He usually stayed posted outside, taking care of anyone that might call the cops on them.

“I just think we should not burn any bridges. Consider this: someone who can disable alarms and slip into tight places might not be a bad addition and would open up the places we can hit.” And, he thought to himself, she could probably use some allies herself. While going solo did mean not splitting, it also meant not having any firing cover in case she got caught. Cat burglars like her came and went too often, fading into obscurity.

“If you get killed or get anyone else killed, just know I _will_ hurt you,” Geoff replied, and by the series look in his eyes, he knew he was dead serious. Geoff turned to Jack, who was adjusting her sniper rifle. She was going to situate herself on the roof of the building across the street and give an extra eye to Ray.

“I won’t let anything happen to you or anyone else, that I can promise,” Ryan crossed his fingers in a sort of scout’s honor salute, but deep down nobody really trusted Ryan. And Ryan knew that. He was a wild card, but he also hadn’t double crossed anyone. Yet.

While the rest of the crew set up in case Ryan could work this out, Ryan adjusted his mask, making sure it wasn’t easily snatched off...just in case this didn’t work out. He slid a beretta into the back of his jeans, making sure that it was hidden by his track jacket. It wouldn’t be readily accessible in case he needed a quick draw, but if she didn’t know he was armed, then he probably had a chance to subdue her without firing.

That was, of course, the worst case scenario.

“I know you’re behind me,” the stranger mused without even turning around. “I would make some dumb quip like is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me but I think it’s fair to say that both are true.”

Ryan suppressed the urge to groan, and casually placed his hands up out of his pockets in case she turned around. He didn’t need to give her any reason to try and take him out.

“You got me,” Ryan relented, glancing around at the surroundings, in case he needed to make a quick exit and warn the others. “I’m not going to hurt you, I just want to talk.”

“You’re going to ask me if I’ll let you in on the job and split the haul with your friends in exchange for backup. Look, I’m not dumb just because my hair happens to be blonde, I know what you and your buddies are up to. The answer’s no,” she turned around, and placed her index finger over her lips and pointed to a security camera. Well, fuck. Thank god for that mask, but being caught on camera? He was better than that.

“They’re going to kill you,” Ryan spoke nonchalantly, as if that were an everyday concern. Which, in his line of work, it really kind of was.

“I know they’re going to _try_. But they won’t even see me. Because you’re not going to give them a chance.” And with that, the girl turned around and went back to work, finally cutting the wire to the alarm system. “Aha! Done. Now are you coming or what?”

Ryan was, well, confused. Because obviously this girl had no intention of joining their crew, but she was still letting him help her with the job. Did she only want to split the cut with him or something? Because he knew if he didn’t share with the rest of his crew then he was going to have five guns pointed at him the next time they met.

“Uhhhhhh....” was all Ryan could manage because he simply was not following her logic.

“You’re right, I could use the backup. But there is no way in hell I am letting this haul be cut between more than two people. Now either help me out and become very rich or fuck off and get your friends off my back.”

Sometimes, Ryan conceded, you had to do something stupid to get results. In the long run, it wasn’t even about the money. It was about the chaos. The need for change, to unsettle the status quo. He couldn’t care less about the money so long as there was the promise of carnage.

And loyalties, as it turned out, were easy enough to break when you didn’t know anything about the crew you were working with. For instance, nobody used their real names. Why would they? If any of them were caught, it would be too easy to track down everyone else.

So when Ryan turns off his radio and helps the new girl bag as much as they could within the span of two minutes (because he knew when he didn’t check in, that the boys would assume he was killed) and slipped out the exit that Jinx - that was what she preferred to be called - had mapped out. The exit that Gavin, their point man, had managed to miss in his sweep of the place earlier that week. Which wasn’t at all surprising, because it was Gavin.

Jinx had stowed a Ruffian nearby, and with the extra time they had before Ryan’s crew noticed he was missing, they managed to get to the Cargobob that Ryan had called in earlier, intending to meet his crew at the top of Mount Chiliad. Instead, he, a pretty lady, and several bags of stolen jewelry were heading for the high ground.

“I gotta be honest, I didn’t think you’d run,” Jinx responded, pulling off her own mask so that Ryan could get a better glimpse at her face. The fact that she, someone who just met him, was trusting him this much was a little worrisome. Had Ryan made the right choice? Should he now be worried?   
“It wasn’t the money,” Ryan admitted with a shrug, hesitating to pull off his mask and deciding that even if she had apparently put trust enough in him to let him see her with no mask on that he wasn’t ready for _her_ to see _him_. “I like the idea of coming across them again and shooting each and every one of them in the back.” Okay, maybe that sounded less creepy in his head.

“You’re a cheery one,” she quipped with a smirk. She slipped closer to Ryan, glancing out the window to see where he was guiding the Cargobob. “My apartment’s not too far from here. Isn’t there a helipad or something you can land on?”

“Yeah, I know where to go.” Ryan wasn’t much for flying, but he could handle a Cargobob when it wasn’t carrying another vehicle. Landing was another story. He wasn’t about to tell Jinx that he was kind of terrible at this, though. After all, why did he let her get in the Cargobob if they were likely not going to get _out_ of said vehicle?

It was, without a doubt, a miracle that they landed without crashing. When Ryan turned the engine off and he turned to Jinx, he was about to say something, but then she was taking his mask off and Ryan...Ryan well, he _let her_. For the first time since she took off her mask, he took the time to actually look at her, noting the golden hair she had mentioned earlier, but also the way her eyes glistened as she looked at him, the way her lips were curved in a playful smile, and how she was leaning in to press her lips against his.

When she kissed him, Ryan didn’t kiss back. He didn’t wrap his arm around her and pull her close to him. He didn’t let her deepen the kiss and she didn’t slip her tongue into his mouth. At least, that was what he told himself. Because the kiss most certainly did not happen.

And Ryan most certainly did not enjoy it.

“My name’s not really Jinx,” she whispered into his ear when they both pulled back, mutually running low on air. “Though I’m guessing you knew that by now. It’s Ashley.”

“My name’s not Ryan,” he murmured, his arms still around her, with both of them still in the Cargobob. “It’s James.” This whole learning to trust someone thing was so foreign to him that it seemed weird to offer up his real name. But if she was going to be honest with him, and if they were actually going to try this whole partnering up thing, then maybe it was worth it to open up to someone.

“Come back with me. I’ve got a seller for the jewelry, he’ll be by in the morning.”

Ryan knew he shouldn’t.

He knew he should go back to his apartment and clear out everything, get rid of any evidence in case his boys caught up to him. But he also knew he was safer at Ashley’s. And he was about to become rich enough that anything in that apartment was already lost. No, it was better to already assume his apartment was not a place he could ever go back to. He was stuck, and if it weren’t for the adrenaline rush at the thought of picking off his old partners one by one, he would be freaking the fuck out right about now.

But this was how he thrived. He loved the thrill, the promise of bloodshed. And the change was nice, too. The change of location, the change of partners. Actually letting someone in for once instead of putting up a wall that even his old partners couldn’t get through.

“Lead the way.”

Tomorrow, he might be dead. But tonight? Tonight he could cherish the company of someone new.


End file.
